Class Proliferation - How Many Is Too Many?

The topic this week is classes - how many is too many? In fantasy MMOs, there's really only three roles: take damage, deal damage, or heal damage. However, players like to be more unique than those 3 roles seem to allow, so how can developers fulfill their expectations without watering down distinctions between the classes?

"There are plenty of variations on these themes, some of them very convincing, and a seemingly infinite number of ways to mix up these archetypes. But hybridization is a dead end street – while effective at early and mid-levels, there's no way to justify taking along a hybrid on an endgame raid when a raid limit is in effect. You simply have to make every slot count. For this reason alone – though there are other justifications I'll name shortly – the quality > quantity class argument wins out if your goal as a developer is to keep players in the game long enough to discover the endgame."

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